This study tested hypotheses drawn from the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management about the outcomes facilitated by men and women in third party roles in dispute resolution in organizations. Data collected in association with an MBA teambuilding exercise showed that when women played third party roles in which they lacked authority over disputants, they were able to facilitate an outcome that was both acceptable to disputants and met organizational interests, more than men in these roles or than men and women in third party roles with authority. Behavioral data suggested that this effect was due to women in the third party peer role eschewing and men in the third party role displaying agentic behavior. The study contributes to the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management by showing women's traditional leadership strengths of collaboration and participation can result in unique outcomes when they have less rather than more authority over disputants.

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This study tested hypotheses drawn from the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management about the outcomes facilitated by men and women in third party roles in dispute resolution in organizations. Data collected in association with an MBA teambuilding exercise showed that when women played third party roles in which they lacked authority over disputants, they were able to facilitate an outcome that was both acceptable to disputants and met organizational interests, more than men in these roles or than men and women in third party roles with authority. Behavioral data suggested that this effect was due to women in the third party peer role eschewing and men in the third party role displaying agentic behavior. The study contributes to the literature on gender, leadership, and conflict management by showing women's traditional leadership strengths of collaboration and participation can result in unique outcomes when they have less rather than more authority over disputants.One of the many unanswered questions in the leadership literature is whether men and women have different leadership styles when they occupy the same organizational roles (Eagly & Carli, 2007, p. 121). Their styles may be similar because organizational roles institutionalize stable patterns of behavior (Katz & Kahn, 1966). Organizational roles cue and constrain, prescribe, and limit behavior. However, standardization of organizational role performance is a matter of degree. Gender may influence role behavior due to stereotyped expectations of role incumbents and of those interacting with them. These gender effects may be particularly noticeable when role expectations give leaders latitude both in terms of their own expectations and those of others (Eagly & Carli, 2007, p. 122). Some organizational roles, therefore, may provide the latitude for women to enact unique role behavior.In this study, we apply theory from the gender and leadership and conflict management literatures to generate and test hypotheses concerning the behavior of male and female managers engaged as third parties in dispute resolution. We propose that given role latitude-no formal authority over the disputants-women may facilitate an outcome that is unique compared to outcomes facilitated by males in the same role or by males and females in a third party role with authority. We briefly review literature from leadership studies of power and authority to distinguish directive versus participatory forms of leadership. We review the manager-as-a-third-party literature in more detail to identify two parallel forms of third party intervention. We review the gender and leadership literature to make the point that men and women tend to lead differently-men generally acting in a more direct and women in a more participatory fashion-but that this gender effect does not occur in all settings. This literature review leads to our primary hypothesis that the context of organizational role authority will impact how men

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